Posts Categorized: Civil Liberties

The whistleblower Edward Snowden believes Russia is behind a leak of malware allegedly belonging to the US National Security Agency (NSA). Hackers calling themselves Shadow Brokers started an auction for the malware last week. The malware is used by the NSA to attack or counter-attack in cyberspace. Source: BBC Technology Date: August 17th, 2016 Link: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37104745 Discussion… Read more »

Around 40 million UK adults – 78% of us – go online every day or almost every day. By posting on social media, booking tickets or buying a DVD, we add to the 2.3 billion gigabytes of internet data created daily. The data trail we leave on our online journey says much about our habits… Read more »

You probably have access to a mobile device. You can search for information, read the news, and communicate with people freely. And you likely learn something new every single day as a direct result of your time online. But for hundreds of millions of people, the internet isn’t so simple. Our lives are increasingly lived… Read more »

The Commerce Committee, led by Republican John Thune of South Dakota, asked CEO Mark Zuckerberg to respond to anonymous allegations that former contractors suppressed news about conservatives and links to right-leaning websites. Thune demanded to know who is ultimately responsible for approving stories for the “trending” box on the Facebook home page; what steps Facebook… Read more »

For the fifth year in a row, ambush attacks on police officers were the No. 1 cause of felonious deaths of law enforcement officers in the line of duty. Nevertheless, Google continues to market a smartphone application that lets lawbreakers pinpoint the location of police officers in the field. Google’s executives won’t even discuss the… Read more »

Source: BBC Technology News Date: March 31, 2016 Link: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35916857 Discussion 1) Apple was clear when it rejected the court order to crack into the iPhone held by the FBI that doing so would expose all iPhone users to the possibility of having an unprotected iPhone. With the iPhone now cracked open, what does Apple need to do… Read more »

Like everything from watches to refrigerators, cars are fast becoming internet-connected and laden with sensors monitoring their every move. A “black box” can be found in millions of cars globally, now that more and more drivers are choosing so-called telematics insurance policies. And these devices, that monitor speed, acceleration, braking, cornering – all aspects of… Read more »

“You can criticize institutions, religions, and you can engage in robust political conversation,” said Bickert, of where Facebook draws the line. “But what you can’t do is cross the line into attacking a person or a group of people based on a particular characteristic.” For Facecbook crafting the policy is “tricky,” especially given that 80%… Read more »

Source: BBC Technology Date: February 25th, 2016 Link: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35459433 Discussion 1) A lot of the article is about how much of what happens in the legal system is about written details and how to dig through and organize that better: “You actually need the data to drive these more advanced tools. In the 21st Century, data is the… Read more »

When we share pictures of our kids on Flickr, we probably don’t expect to see them turn up as faces on coffee mugs for sale on website Koppie-Koppie. Using Twitter (TWTR, Tech30) to comment on politics wasn’t supposed to land us in jail, as is happening in Turkey. Having a mobile phone with a SIM card wasn’t… Read more »